The Health Equity and Accountability Act sets out to tackle health disparities, particularly among racial and ethnic minorities, and make some much-needed improvements, according to a blog by Sinsi Hernández-Cancio, Director of Health Equity at FamiliesUSA.
Communities of color — such as African Americans, Latinos, American Indian and Alaska Natives and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders — are far more likely to suffer from certain health conditions and experience serious complications and death than people in white communities.
In addition to being more likely to experience disparities in health status, data collection and analysis in healthcare among minorities needs a lot of work, according to Ms. Hernández-Cancio.
"You don't count if you aren't counted. When health advocates are unable to quantify the nature and scope of the health disparity problem with accurate, robust data sets, stakeholders are forced into a world of anecdotes, assumptions, and guesstimates," she wrote.
Although the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act have improve standards for collecting data on minority health to some degree, the HEAA — which was introduced in the House by Rep. Lucille Royball-Allard (D-Calif.) in July — would go even further.
Listed are three things to know about the HEAA, as outlined by Ms. Hernández-Cancio:
- Government surveys and programs would have to collect data about primary languages spoken other than just English and Spanish, obtaining more information on communities that may experience language barriers.
- Surveys and programs would also have to oversample Asian American and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander populations to obtain larger, more reliable data sets for these groups, which tend to be overlooked.
- Including sexual orientation and gender identity on government surveys and programs would also be required under the bill to better document and track the disparities faced by the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer communities.